Thursday 7th March
What a cool place!! We love Avignon!
We spent the day exploring this ancient city! We ventured over to the Palais de Papes (Palace of Popes), the largest medieval palace in the world, and one of the most important medieval Gothic buildings in Europe! It was once a fortress and palace for the popes, and seat of Western Christianity during the 14th Century, effectively the Vatican City for a time in history.
Architecturally the palace is amazing! It is absolutely hugeeeeee, it is the definition of grand and is just breathtaking.
We hung around the square under the palace "Place du Palais", just enjoying being in such a place, soaking up the sunshine, and listening to a busker playing the saxophone, and watching artists paint.
Right next to the palace is Avignon Cathedral.
Again, the architecture is amazing, it is a beautiful 12th Century romanesque building, and the statue out the front is a work of art.
We wandered a little further around and up a hill to a garden "Jardin des doms" which had a nice little fountain, greenery and a fantastic vantage point to admire the Pont d'Avignon.
We bought a panini each for lunch from a little stall on the hill and sat in the garden looking out at the beautiful views of the country side.
After lunch we made our way down to the Pont d'Avignon and had a little walk along the river, taking in the beauty of the city from outside the walls.
A little while later we found ourselves back within the city walls and meandered through the streets, just getting lost and marvelling in the beauty of the place, and imaging what life would have been like within these walls back in the day. It is such a beautiful place, with such a lovely feel to it.
On our way back out of the city to accommodation we ended up passing another smaller cathedral, "Saint Pierre Basilica" that was tucked away in some back streets.
We thought we would have some fun with dinner tonight and decided to make crêpes. It was great fun, and so yum!
We made a savoury crêpe filled with bolognese and cheese, followed by a dessert crêpe (of course!). The dessert crepe consisted of some caramel sauce, crushed up biscuit, and kinder penguin thing (I think it's French, I've never seen one before - it was like mock creme and sponge in chocolate). Mmmmmm. Bon appétite!
Friday 8th March
This morning was spent catching up with everyone at home.
We then packed a picnic lunch and headed out to visit a fortress for the afternoon! It was a little over an hours walk to the next town where the castle was, so we stopped outside our city walls and had a little picnic lunch by the river before continuing on our adventure.
We had a lovely walk over the bridge and to the super cute town of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon which is home to Fort Saint-André.
After some confusion and accidentally buying tickets to some gardens (we didn't know there were gardens here), we eventually got the tickets refunded and the right tickets purchased from a different room down the road (within the fortress).
The fortress was so cool! We pretty much had it to ourselves. It was also the first fortress or castle that I'd been to where you can actually climb up onto the fortress wall and go into the ramparts and really just run around and explore it. We had such a fun time, it's definitely a highlight of the trip. It was fun to imagine being the king and queen of the land and what the people of the time would have been looking out at from the castle compared to what we could see today.
There was a small church within the fortress as well as a couple of dwellings.
We could even see Avignon from the fortress!
Once we had had our fortress fix, we walked the hour and a bit back to our apartment and made crepes for dinner again (they're just so tasty!).
Saturday 9th March
There were a few logistics that we had to catch up on this morning so we had a slow start, enjoyed some brunch and then got stuck into it.
Once we were done, we made some lunch and then headed into the town to meander the streets. Our meandering however did not last very long. Once we'd made our way to the main street of the city we saw a lot of police kitted out in riot gear, at least half a dozen police vans and the square full of "Yellow Vest" protestors. The police came over to us and searched our bag and then we headed in the opposite direction.
We wandered through the town, grabbed some groceries and then decided to just head back to the apartment for the afternoon and start getting ready to head off tomorrow.
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